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Undivided Learning with Dr. Sarah Pelangka: All About Assessments

Undivided Learning with Dr. Sarah Pelangka: All About Assessments


Published: Apr. 22, 2022Updated: Mar. 7, 2024

Dr. Sarah Pelagnka, special education advocate and owner of KnowIEPs, explains how assessments work, how they're administered, how to read them, and what to do if you disagree with them during this Undivided Learning event.

For more information about assessments, check out our IEP assessments decoder.

Event transcript

Lindsay Crain
Today, we're gonna jump in and talk about a fun topic that is a hot topic for a lot of families. Welcome, everybody as you're joining today's Undivided weekly live chat. Today we have Dr. Sarah Pelangka. She's back and we're talking all about assessments.

The last time that we spoke, there were a lot of questions about assessments, and it's definitely one of those areas where parents really feel like "I don't know what I don't know." So we want to start peeling back the layers.

We'll start with some of the essentials. So when and why do kids receive education assessments?

Dr. Sarah Pelangka
Yeah, so I think the most kind of common answer is assessments are required to determine whether or not a child is eligible for special education services.

So, in order for that to take place, the assessment is the first step in the process. If and when a student already has an IEP, there may also be a need, either additional needs arise or are there any special education services necessary to add to the IEP.

The answer is yes. Then we take that information and add it to the IEP, and if the answer's no, maybe accommodations can be recommended.

The parents or caregivers/guardians can request an assessment at any time. There are multiple areas, which I know we'll get into in a bit, but school teams can also request that students be assessed in particular areas. But in the state of California, it does require parental consent in order for those assessments.

LC
What are the timelines around request for assessments?

Dr. P
So in the state of California, we'll be touching on that. Basically, let's go from the parent requesting assessment. The district has to respond within 15 calendar days in writing. So they're either delivering the assessment plan to the parent or a prior written notice expressing why they're denying the assessment and then from the data that signed assessments plan is returned to the district, and that ignites that 60-day timeline.

So if there's any longer than five school days, then the timeline pauses. So for example, Thanksgiving break is only five days so that would not be a pause. However, winter break would be a pause in the timeline. So basically the last day of school before that frame was 30. The timeline paused and then it means that they returned 31.

LC
What type of assessments are even available? How do we know what to ask for?

We're going to jump into two different kinds of common assessments that can be asked for but first, let's start with an overview of the types of assessments that are available.

Dr. P
I'm not going to say all of them, but I think the most common assessments that I hear parents wanting to have an assessment that maybe they don't know there is an assessment. So obviously, kind of overall psycho educational components. So looking at processing cognition, and the academic assessment, so looking at how this student is performing across all areas, especially academic instruction, motor assessments, so fine motor, occupational therapy, gross motor, physical therapy, there's APE, that's when I find a lot of parents are familiar with.

So even though your child may not have like, means as far as physical therapy, and maybe they're struggling motor wise in terms of participating physically with, like sports or games or activities or even on the playground, consider adaptive PE assessment.

I guess to kind of follow that line of thought like a recreation and leisure assessment is when many people don't know this, again, and they're struggling with playing or socialization. That's a good one.

You know, there's assessments for social emotional needs. So looking at intensive, individualized setting, the two most common ideas from parents that either don't know exist or want to be assessed in is the functional behavior.

So a student is struggling with behavior in the school setting, so a lot of parents don't know that there is an assessment for that, a very objective assessment process.

Definitely check out about where you might have assessments that might be available.

LC
One question we got today was, our child is in general education, can we ask that someone assess the environment efficacy?

Dr. P
Absolutely.

So for example, if you have students really only showing articulation errors or, you know, potentially mild speech delay but necessarily affect that child's cognitive academic language. Just being aware of that.

I don't really think there's a formal name for it, just an assessment, I guess, but having an inclusion specialist. They're very rare.

There aren't many districts that have inclusion specialists, so oftentimes, they're contracted to absolutely having that assessment being considered to determine the environment, you know, adequately supporting your child needs when they're in the class setting. Just going back to your earlier point.

In case we need to bring in, specialists assess whenever there is a recommendation for a change in setting, they're trying to your child for a special day class, or your child's been in an SAI for an extended period of time and you've been requesting a shift to more inclusion. I feel like that's the time when it would make sense. The former example, already in Gen Ed, let's look at if it's being done properly, bring in this assessment. Let's do what we call like a diagnostically for 30 to 60 days and have specialists come in and come back to the table.

You hear this a lot. And a parent asks for a specific test done as part of the assessment, so not just this general area. And it says, for example, to specifically ask for whatever can parents request. So legally, they cannot. Basically the way it works is the law really differs and especially kind of leaves that up to them, and they have kind of knowledge to determine which they want to use. However, it is possible to make those requests and throw them in.

So I'll say well, all you did was submit questionnaires to people but you didn't do any direct assessment with the child. I've never had a district deny that same thing if you feel like they're missing processing areas all the time. They go back and add those assessments.

Unless it's some outlandish request. You can't, like, tell them you're only going to use one and I have found that particularly with volunteers. They really have a preference for which tools they like to use, like different school sites really prefer one or the other.

LC
We touched on this the last time we spoke, but it bears repeating. How can parents look at a completed assessments and determine if it's a valid and reliable assessment? You're looking for "this looks like your child."

Dr. P
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that's the kind of most basic answers. If you're reading this assessment, and this report doesn't sound like your child or sound like the person you know, because at the end of the day, you know your child better than anyone. And a lot of these assessors, especially if it's in the very beginning of this as an initial assessment, don't know your child at all, aside from this very little time they've spent assessing them.

However, it's possible for your child to perform differently in different settings. Have you sent anyone to observe, have your videos if you have a lot of questions, I definitely recommend that.

Other things that determine the validity, we kind of touched on last time, you know, how long did they actually spend with your child? I actually had one this week where collectively the psychologist and therapist spent 40 minutes with the child. You obviously can't really discern much with 20 minutes with a student.

And then sometimes testing instruments, we touched on this last time, assuming this is a child where you know that your child has, for example, and underlying expressive language disorder. Cognitive instruments, they're using verbal and their cognitive scores are going to come out of an underlying language impairment. So as a parent you have to really cut it down, right, like obviously my child is going to present a lower performing score, so taking into consideration the child as a whole.

That's the biggest one, and also attention if you have a child with ADHD, and then it's coming out there's all these low scores, like how much of that is impacted by the attention.

A student can't produce these skills being confounded and impacted by his attention. So that's really the bigger picture of really parsing out.

I think ideally, at the end of the day, we would hope that as the experts they would know what to administer and not to administer. Parents really shouldn't be given the burden of having to do that, right. We shouldn't have to tell them how to do their job. I think that's why it tends to happen after the fact because that's not the parents' job. That's when you get into like, things like that invalid.

LC
We have a comment in the chat window, she said, I feel like it's hard to make a case in this specific class. And I know you mentioned the parents can always hear, I know schools have rules about what is a reasonable amount of time that a parent can request.

Dr. P
So I think the first thing for parents to know right now, given the state of COVID and pandemic, I think getting a lot of clients calling because districts say we can't observe due to COVID. Sorry, that's not true. So, if districts are telling you that you can't observe, you need to push back and say show me the written policy. I understand that it may be the case that your district isn't allowing in-person observations, but I can absolutely observe virtually.

So that's number one, in terms of restricting the amount of time, and there's really not much parents can do about it other than schedule multiple observations. So I think that's kind of a new thing over the recent in the past quite honestly, they would just say, Okay, great. Go ahead to this classroom down the hall. Have fun, we'll see when you're done. And now, you notice you're getting accompanied, right, like the principal's going with you or the psychologist is going. And that's the liability issue. Rather than kind of focusing on, you know, I want to see my kid all day or I want to see my kid for a time, make sure you're going during the times of concern. So if you want to see recess, if you want to schedule it for math, schedule multiple observations. I also think it's fair to say that a teacher is going to be impacted if the parent's sitting in there for hours and hours, right, like we have to kind of understand that.

The different perspective is to clarify requested accommodations assessments and the receptive language accommodations. The reason being the whole point of it is to look at the gap.

We're looking at how they're performing in whatever area we're talking about comparison to same-age peers to determine if we're getting some accommodations, then we're not able to see that's true.

So for standardized assessments, which is pretty much the bulk of what you're going to be seeing in like a triennial or a psycho educational evaluation, the answer would be no. However, you do need to ensure that the assessments that are being run makes sense for that child. So kind of like Lindsay and I were talking about earlier, if it's a student who only communicates via AAC. You don't have to ensure that the tests you're doing to look at their processing and their ability to whatever the skills are, whether it's academic or cognitive.

It's an assessment that's been proven to be valid and reliable for someone that uses it, so it wouldn't be an accommodation, it would just be something that's been standardized for that population. If that makes sense.

LC
Before I ask the next question about psychoeducation, I mean, is there anything you want to say to here I like what you said before about like, it shouldn't be our job but it feels like we have to find every single detail get dropped. And I know a lot of parents feel that that pressure coming from them as well. And the question is, is there anything you want to say to sort of relieve that pressure or to or not? What should we be thinking about? How do I know if there's, you know, assessing in all the areas, okay, maybe I'm just speaking for myself and the way that my mind doesn't stop, but I've heard somebody out there relate. What do you want to say?

Dr. P
There was a lot in that question. So it's just a kind of final point about accommodations. Like you cannot accommodate a standardized assessment. It doesn't make sense, it defeats the purpose. If you're talking about testing, we know that these learners learn with certain accommodations. It's not changing what they're learning, it's changing how they're accessing that content. So they're still being tested on the same thing, just maybe they'll have more time or whatever.

But you're only going to know that accommodations are needed to see how they perform without those accommodations. Does that make sense? So they have to go through that process, right? You can an opt out of an evaluation and just doing records review, but that's very rarely recommended. So that's that piece in terms of knowing that they're going to do their job right before they assess your child's research, understanding what tests are out there, but you can absolutely do that.

Consult with someone familiar with those assessments and look for your particular child. And like I said, if it's a student with AAC, there's very specific. Right? So you can definitely become knowledgeable on that and make sure you're holding the district accountable and saying, I just want to make sure that you know that my child is an AAC user and these are the types of assessments that you're going to be using. Are they familiar with assessing that population? If they're not, you should ensure that the district find somebody. Because then your results absolutely will not be valid. If they ever assess the student that only communicates the first time, they're not going to know what they're doing. So they need to refer out.

LC
We're starting to get some questions about specifics, so we do want to dive into some of the more commonly used assessments, psycho educational assessment, obviously. So what is it and you kind of touched on this before, but just to reiterate, a psycho educational assessment. What do we need to know?

Dr. P
The psycho educational assessment encompasses the cognitive and processing pieces. It also generally encompasses all the pieces that are done by the school psychologist, so that would be processing, sometimes academic and then any social emotional pieces. So looking at behavior, empathy, impacted attention, so if there's component that may be impacting.

Not every student qualifies for special education, or special education requires that like I said, if it's just a concern with speech, language, and that's all that's happening, they're only going to get an assessment from the speech language pathologists.

So it's just dependent on as far as can this assessment be weaponized by the district, I mean, for example, can it be used to determine the placement for a child. The technical legal answer is no, you can never solely use assessment scores to dictate placement. However, literally, the IEP I had just saw attempted to do that.

So they literally assess this student in all Gen Ed Classes right now with the exception of directed studies, and brought in as an SAI teacher, claimed she was a consultant and said, I just want you to see how low all of his academic scores are, and they did cognitive standardized testing.

Some people might not understand why. So very archaic law. But basically in a nutshell, the school is not allowed to administer standardized cognitive scores for any student who identifies as African American, and there's actually a whole plethora of assessments that can be standardized, but anyway, they did that and then they use these scores that all came, almost all of them are at the low to extremely low and just didn't even explain the testing to parents and explain what was happening, just showed her this graph, and said, so we just wanted to let you know that he's performing really low and we think he may be a good candidate for an SAI class, which is why we have our consultant here. I literally just asked her one question: Are these the test scores that are most commonly seen in the students who attend your class? Yes, it is. And that was it.

Blew my mind, it was so bad, but they attempted it.

They will try to use it against you as a rationale to argue that, for instance, this child because they have such low scores can't possibly be successful in a gen ed setting and it's absolutely not a legal way to go about it.

LC
Say if they don't have you sitting next to them. What is the response to that? Because if we're talking about assessments, they aren't being used, what can a parent say in that circumstance?

Dr. P
Well, first of all, telling them flat out: I'm sorry, but as a member of this team, I'm well aware that test scores alone cannot be used to dictate placement. We need to continue to go through and look at the full spectrum of placement. Like for this particular example, this kid is in all gen ed classes and it's passing with the lowest score. So why are we talking about moving him to SAI classes, that makes no sense. So you have to look at all the information as a whole, you need to consider goals and accommodations and services.

And again, this is where the inclusion specialist can come in, if you're talking about pulling my kid out, just because he has these scores, and let's talk more about how we can help them be successful even though he already is in his classes. So there's a lot of things that parents can say, but I think the most important is knowing that absolutely, it would be a predetermination, which is illegal on test scores alone.

Of course, we have the flip side of this conversation, which is we are from a family whose son is significantly below grade level. According to teacher data, he's not meeting his IEP goals, but his scores put him in the average or low average range that the district wants from SpEd.

LC
This same point you're making, the scores alone can't be used for that.

Dr. P
Yeah, so I see situations like that as well. Again, my first thought would be: are the test scores valid? So parents can absolutely request to have an IEE, and a case like that and have a student looked at again, but taking into consideration everything if he's scoring average on these scores, and maybe it was valid in a one-on-one setting, he's able to perform higher. But then you say, Okay, maybe he was able to do that with you and it's in this small confined space, but he's not able to apply that in the classroom. So we need to ask ourselves why, like what's going on? Is it attention related? Is it sensory related? Is it just, you know, there's so many possibilities and looking at screens, looking at teacher interviews, looking at those report measures, looking at all of it, that's why it's so important to do the whole shebang, that's my professional opinion.

LC
I also wanted to ask, you touched on sort of the school sites or administering tests. So is a school psych qualified to administer any psycho educational tests?

Dr. P
Well, you know, when you were saying like, it could be the first time a district is assessing somebody who uses AAC, right, so they're not gonna know how to do that. And so I know a lot of parents' concern of like, well, okay, the school site is doing some specific tests, but are they qualified to do any?

No, they are definitely testing instruments that cannot be administered by any school site. So the next one, an MC is used for looking at attention, and I'm not going to know the name off the top of my head. I think it's a neuro psych type. You have to be certified to administer the autism testing as well. And so if you're not certified, you can't administer that. So I have seen it, you know, be the case where when that's requested, they have to have someone else within the district or even find someone outside of the district to do it. So there are different testing instruments that require different certifications or levels of credentialing.

And then again, they may be qualified to administer a test but not familiar with it. It's just like a BCBA. Like if I've never worked with a population of individuals who have OCD, I'm not going to consider myself the expert on helping people with OCD. I need to consult, right, so it would be the same for any professional.

Distinct assessments and services can help me understand and others who might not understand what the difference is. Yeah, so some districts do kind of put them both under the same assistive technology umbrella, but there are differences. So assistive technology can technically be considered a kind of a sub department of assistive technology that specifically refers to communication so that is strictly a communication assessment. So looking at in the student, and it can be low tech, just looking at high tech devices, looking at visual schedules, or just basic visual static boards or whatever it is, it's much more low tech, whereas assistive technology and at assessment doesn't look at the communication piece. It's looking at how to help the student access the academics within their environment.

By that could even be something as low tech as adaptive scissors that's considered, a calculator, a pencil grip, to high tech things like using you know, stuff on their computer that can help them access you know text. There's so many different things out there. So those are kind of the two differences: communication versus access.

So, for assistive communication, I would say anytime there's concerns with your child's ability to functionally communicate their response and receive instruction to the language barrier and other things have been proven to be successful. So you know the speech language pathologist has assessed and maybe they might recommend it right off the bat. Or we've kind of had these speech services in place and there's just minimal progress and my child still isn't really making much progress in terms of their ability to communicate or respond to other people's communications with them.

It's really often commonly used, I would say, for individuals with Down syndrome, it's a really good assessment to look into and also individuals who have like specific learning disabilities, particularly with reading and writing, and also math, but there's so many pieces that can support reading and writing nowadays, that are like mind blowing, like so many cool things, you know, that students and it's so common now, like, it's not like it stands out, like everyone has a laptop now it's cool, right? Or everyone has a technological device. So it's not things that are making them look different. So that's really cool.

LC
In the chat a parent asked a little earlier, Have you heard of doing an evaluation on a student that can speak, struggles to show knowledge at CSS assessment?

Dr. P
If I understand the question, AAC can definitely be used not solely for the purpose of just it doesn't have to be their primary mode of communication, so the student can absolutely be vocal, but maybe they require a little bit more supports, like participating instructions, being able to answer the question. So the device can be set up. So it's like specific to whatever the lesson is for that day, if that's kind of what she's asking and it helps them to be more participatory. But it's not that they have to still vocalize.

I mean, I think AAC also helps students be able to access your environment, I mean, it helps them access their wants their needs, to be able to participate, to be able to socialize.

LC
Well, probably the most questions that we get about any assessments about FBAs or functional behavioral assessments, so again, if you can explain what that is and when a child qualifies, and when they don't.

Dr. P
Yeah, this can probably have a whole different session. Yeah, so an FBA stands for functional behavior assessment. So the short answer is, in order for a student to have a behavior intervention plan, they don't have to be in special education. It's a Gen Ed service. So there's like different tiers of implants. So we have a positive behavior intervention plan and a comprehensive behavior intervention plan. Some districts may refer to it as tier one, tier two, tier three. So the pyramid or the lower tier is much less comprehensive. It's much more straightforward, like a single page doesn't require an FBA. So people can just put their heads together and develop this plan to support a student, right.

You need a comprehensive behavioral plan. It requires an FBA, so that's one way in which the FBA isn't working. It's proven to not be effective. We're still seeing behaviors. We need more data as a BCBA. Personally, anytime there's behavior, we want data, right? So I always push for an FBA. If you know, it's something that requires some level of a plan, because, you know, like, ethically, it doesn't really make sense to develop a plan if we don't know why.

And I also think it's important to point out that it also depends on like, the eligibility for a medical diagnosis. A lot of what I see oftentimes, particularly for ADHD, is we're like writing these behavior plans for kids who are off task and attentive and distractible, and it's like part of who they are, and it's part of their disability. So keeping that in mind and making sure that the assessment is taking into consideration, and I will say like 99.9% of assessments in the area of behavior don't do that. They're very straightforward, very surface level just looking at the four functions is if we're accessing a data, that doesn't take into consideration anything internal. You know, is there emotionality tied to it, and the most common goal is let's teach the kid to ask for a break.

And then what happens is we're teaching these kids to ask for breaks, and then they're asking for breaks all the time, and then we're having behaviors because we have to bring them back from breaks. So FBAs are great. I think they're necessary, but I think they're poorly done. I think there's a shortage of behaviorists to adequately support the area. So for parents to know just like assessments going in, you really need to know your child as a whole and make sure that the recommendations make sense. You're questioning how it's going to be supported, what strategies are going to be put in place? And also first, before all of that looking at the environment, is the environment even properly set up and conducive to helping your child because that can be the reason why, and once you fix that, they don't even have the behaviors anymore. So there's just so many pieces that go into it.

LC
So is it the district's responsibility to identify and assess a child who needs behavioral supports? Because it often feels like if a parent doesn't request it, kids always have to reach crisis mode before it's offered.

Dr. P
It absolutely is. It's the district's responsibility. It's part of, you know, it's part of the process. It's part of what's available. And I think what almost always happens is rather than doing that as a request for a move to a more restrictive setting, so kind of going back to the inclusion piece, if we have a kid and they're having these behaviors and what happens when you have a kid who's disruptive, teachers are like, I can't do this. I have 30 kids, we need this kid out there. This kid needs help, like something needs to come in. And so an inclusion specialist can go in and say hold on, let's make sure that this student is being adequately supported. Maybe they don't even need an FBA. Maybe we shouldn't even be approaching it from that lens. Maybe we need to look at what does this environment look like, and is it meeting the students needs? So it's so quick to jump to just the student is the problem and we need to fix the students, when it could very well be many other things that are going on.

LC
That makes sense. I know we're running short on time, so be sure to get your questions into the chat window. We have a couple more questions here. We'll get to those in the chat window as much as we can. We also want to hit on some of the lesser known assessments just to bring possibilities to life in a way that's relevant obviously, like you said earlier for families. So one hot topic that's been active in our community is social rec and the recent funding that's come back and Regional Centers, they are also recreational assessments in the list. For educational purposes, can you explain those? And what qualifies?

Dr. P
Yeah, so most people don't know that it's a thing. It is a thing and it's basically for students who struggle with accessing that area, recreation and leisure and social interaction in the form of that type of play. So you know, obviously autism is a big one, right? We're thinking of students on the spectrum that struggle with joining in those types of activities and accessing those types of activities. So if this school was not able to basically meet the needs of that area of deficit, some way on campus, they can absolutely provide funds outside recreational activities and or, you know, contract with other partners, community partners to provide that need. And so having that recreation and leisure therapy, recreation therapist is what it would be called come in to do that assessment is really helpful to help either figure out how to meet that need on campus or if there's going to be a way to do that off campus.

LC
I'd also love to hear from families, let us know like if you've used that successfully, I would love to hear more stories. It's very, very rare for parents to know to ask to get it. So we would love to hear the stories.

And all of this is leading up to sort of the pivotal question of what if we disagree, right? These assessments don't feel like they represent our child, or we don't feel like they're getting to where we need to be.

Dr. P
So when we get a meaningful member of the IEP team, you have the right to disagree, you do not have to agree. You don't have to consent. California has is dual consent state, so they can't move forward with anything without your consent unless they file due process and they win. That would be the only way if you disagree and really feel strongly that they got it wrong. You have the option to request more testing, maybe there were pieces that were missing, like I said, you can go back and redo it. If you feel like you just don't want to deal with the district anymore and you don't trust them to complete a valid and reliable assessment, you always have the right to request an IEE, knowing going into that, that the district can deny it, and if they deny, they do have to then file due process to prove that their assessment is valid. It's very rare that that happens, but it can happen.

And I also have seen parents where they're very strongly in disagreement and they're trying to fight for services. Examples may show, for example, writing is very legible and it looks good, and sometimes maybe they're wanting something super perfect. And that's not the purpose of special education. The purpose is to ensure that the students able to access it, not to be the best student in the room. So keeping that in mind, really feeling strongly that something's off. Go in and observe and make sure that you have something to back that up. Have someone go in and observe and make sure that there's reason to just support that disagreement if it's close, there's times where it's just totally out of the way, you know.

LC
So before you jump to it, is there sort of a middle phase that where you're looking at there are some red flags who ask questions like, like in multiple settings for enough time, like we'll go back? I mean, should we, you know, be open and collaborative and allow them to do that so we can see their final assessment are willing to work with us if they're things like that.

Dr. P
Yeah, I think that's kind of what I sent back and add more and more observations. My student has maladaptive strategies, so my recommendation as an information specialist, so you know, again, if the parent has follow-up with the assessor and they may make that recommendation themselves.

LC
A question about using that kind of state testing the school setting to assess learning loss. My son couldn't even respond to the tests. There were no accommodations. He's on the alternative assessment or state testing, which they do. They just gave a score of zero, which is useless. So how do we assess? It's a little different, but when I read that I worried because that could be a lot of our kids. And so I'm really feels like possibly kids with disabilities that are getting left out of that conversation. Is there anything about that?

Dr. P
Yeah, I mean, in terms of assessing for learning loss, I think the best way would be to look at a couple of ways like looking at progress on previous goals and comparison to where he's at now. So that will help you kind of see if there's true regression like if he was improving, improving, improving or meeting goals and then we had to probe those areas and there's regression. That's pretty straightforward data. As far as if you're looking at like testing specifically. I mean, it sounds like he shouldn't have even been given that particular test anyway, beyond the alternative test, so I don't necessarily think those are the best measures of learning loss.

Personally, I think it would be more more indicative of where if there's a regression to really more look at, like his goals and whatever curriculum he's been accessing, and if he's, you know, there shouldn't be data from last year or even the year before to now hopefully the teachers data as far as how he's been performing within his classroom, there should be data, there should be works that you can be looking at to see if his performance been consistent or not. I wouldn't just base it off of like any testing necessarily. I mean, kids have been out of school for so long, like so many kids kind of dipped on their state testing, but it doesn't really mean that we've truly regressed it's just alarming when you see like, just give your kid a zero. And that's okay. And then there's no assessment for learning loss.

LC
Thank you, Dr. Pelangka always for thinking about. you know, guidelines for parents. Observe as needed, and also think about different assessments that might be relevant to request, your constant reminder which is you are part of the IEP team. We are not losing sight of that. You can have that kind of confidence to go in to ask questions and make the case as needed. So thank you for that.

It's always wonderful to be enlightened now. I think I can better explain the difference between AT and AAC.

For those listening again, as always, our goal with these weekly conversations is to bring attention to topics that matter to you. Our mission is to provide guidance to families as they navigate systems, including things like assessments, and all that can be complicated about that so we can help bring the best educational experience to life for all our kids. If you're looking for a dedicated partner to guide you on how to most effectively advocate for procreate and comprehensive assessments, we're offering a free 30 day trial for anybody here on the call. If you're interested in the chat window.

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